Computed Flow around Prolate Spheroid

^ Particle paths of the computed flow around the prolate spheroid. The flow around a prolate spheroid is similar to the flow around a submarine or aircraft fuselage. The paths were visualized using a custom algorithm which give the paths thickness and then shades them.

The flow around the prolate spheroid models was simulated using a commercial finite element code, FIDAP. This simulation involves the solution of the three dimensional, steady, incompressible Navier-Stokes equations with Newtonian viscosity. The computational domain was chosen to simulate the experiment as closely as possible and to make the boundary conditions, especially the problematic outflow boundary condition, orthogonal to the element boundaries.

The 1-4 model used 40 x 80 x 22 points. There were 164,592 elements in the finite element grid. The solution took about 150 hours total on a Sun Sparc10 with 500 MB of RAM in 1994. This corresponds to the experimental result Water Tunnel Flow visualization of Prolate Spheroid (Submarine Shape)